


The Case Files of Kojima Rio

by MintAqua



Category: Sekai-ichi Hatsukoi
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 15:58:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9332507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MintAqua/pseuds/MintAqua
Summary: And so, when Kou mentions yet another stalker at work, it’s not the ‘stalker’ part that causes her to spill the drink she’s pouring at the bar.“There’s a cute high schooler who’s been stalking me at work,” are his exact words. Then he adds, “He’s always hanging out in the self-help aisle, and--”Cue the spillage. “He? And--wait a minute, cute?!”





	

**Author's Note:**

> So this is definitely not my usual content, but I was really into this ship when I first watched the show and I liked it even more when I read some of the later chapters. I'm just a huge sucker for ships where both people feel like the luckiest person on the planet to be with their S.O. and I was really fascinated with thinking about how Yukina must have felt during their first arc. I am also really into the idea of Rio being his long-suffering gal pal who has to hear him wax poetic (well, sorta) all the time. Their friendship seems really cute from what we've seen!
> 
> I actually wrote this a long time ago and only got around to finishing it just now because I was tired of it sitting around unfinished. I was testing out a writing style that was kinda like my own but also adapted some of the dialogue style I often see when I read Japanese translations, e.g. anime subs, translated manga, etc. Might've come out a little weird because of that, but ah well.

If there is one thing Rio has learned from being Yukina Kou’s Official Best Friend, it’s that being inhumanly handsome can make love and romance rather boring.

After being his friend for so long, Rio can’t exactly blame him. She lost count of how many times he had been confessed to around the sixty-seventh mark, and although she hates to say it, a lot of his past girlfriends sound boring even to her. As a result, Kou has simply stopped accepting confessions altogether, even if the girls are even more drop-dead gorgeous than he is. He has become so bored with all of that--all the chasing, the pining, the heart-thumping confessions--that even the incredibly clingy and obsessive girls who fall for him don’t really phase him, anymore.

And so, when Kou mentions yet another stalker at work, it’s not the ‘stalker’ part that causes her to spill the drink she’s pouring at the bar.

“There’s a cute high schooler who’s been stalking me at work,” are his exact words. Then he adds, “He’s always hanging out in the self-help aisle, and--”

Cue the spillage. “ _ He _ ? And--wait a minute,  _ cute _ ?!”

Kou’s eyes bulge. “Ah, Rio! Your drink!”

Rio sets the pitcher aside and scrubs the counter, shouting half-hearted apologies to the coworker who is now glaring at her. “Geez, what a mess…” She draws herself up and pins Kou with a look before he can start patronizing her. “So? Who’s this cute high school boy you’re in love with?”

The question earns her a delicious blush that reaches all the way to his ears. “I-I never said I was in love with him… I just think he’s cute, is all.”

“Is that so?” Rio sizes him up, but he steadfastly dodges her eyes. “It’s just that you’ve never called a guy cute before, so I thought that maybe there’s something special about him.”

Kou squirms in his seat. “There isn’t really anything… I mean, I don’t know that much about him, since he’s always watching from afar…”

“Has he followed you home, yet?” Rio feels the need to ask. Kou tends to be recklessly careless about this sort of thing.

Kou shakes his head, however. “No, never. He always leaves before my shift is over.”

“Hmm, that’s good, I guess… What’s this guy look like?”

“Umm, let’s see...” Kou leans back in his seat and hums. “He’s got a cute face, and cute eyes, and a cute chin, and cute legs--”

“Hey, art major, your vocabulary could use some variety.”

“Well, I can’t draw him,” Kou says with a pout. “I can’t remember his face enough. I just know that I got the impression that he was cute when I saw him.”

Rio sighs. “Geez, you’re the worst at gossiping about boys. How about you come back when you’ve got something more than just ‘he looks cute, probably’?”

Kou sticks his tongue out. “Fiiiine.”

***

“Stalker-san sneezed today,” Kou says out of the blue after finishing his drink. It takes Rio a moment to understand who ‘Stalker-san’ is supposed to be, and even then she feels like she must have blacked out for a chunk of the conversation. After a while, Kou evidently picks up on her confusion and continues, “Stalker-san is the high schooler I told you about.”

“I know who he is,” Rio replies irritably, sliding over to Kou’s stool. “Why are you telling me about his sneezes?”

Kou gives her such a patronizingly patient look that she wants to hit him. “You said you wanted to know more about how cute he is, so I’m telling you! He sneezed today, and it was cute.”

There’s a moment where Rio is not sure if she should laugh or yell at him. She settles for both. “That’s no way to segue into another subject, dumbass! More importantly, what am I supposed to get out of ‘he sneezed and it was cute’? How was it cute?”

“Mm, well it wasn’t really the noise, so much as it was the face he made while he was sneezing…”

“Let me guess: it was a cute face.”

“It was!”

Rio rolls her eyes. “And? Was there anything else he did today that was cute?”

She hadn’t meant it sincerely, but as expected of Kou, he closes his eyes and hums like he’s digging very deep into his archive of cute things Stalker-san has done recently. “Ah! I know. He smiled! He was reading one of my recommended manga, and he smiled!”

“One of your recommended manga…? You mean those cheesy shoujo manga that you advertise all the time?”

Kou nods his head like a damn puppy dog. “Yes, yes, exactly! Ahh, I wonder which part he was reading? That manga really warms my heart whenever I read it, you know? I bet it warmed his heart, too…”

Rio considers telling him that Stalker-san might have actually been smiling because he found all that melodrama amusing, but she ultimately can’t find it in herself to ruin the dreamy look on his face. Instead, she says, “So? Has he joined that unofficial book club of yours, yet?”

“Ah, no… He hasn’t.” Kou frowns. “Lately, it feels like he has been avoiding me even more than usual. Every time I move in his direction, he runs away. I can’t even get within three meters of him! I counted!”

She can’t help it. She snorts. “What’s with this situation? Are you stalking your stalker now?”

Kou’s frown deepens, though it’s really more of a classic pout now. “It’s not funny, Rio!” Before Rio can decide if she wants to be sincere or sarcastic about it, Kou groans and sinks onto the counter, resting his head against it. “He comes into the store every day, but he never buys something, or approaches me, or anything. With him lurking around all the time, it’s so hard to concentrate… I want to know more about him.” He sighs. “Geez… Why won’t he just confess, already?”

Rio blinks. “Do you want him to?” She hadn’t expected the question to be that hard to answer, but there’s an unnaturally long stretch of silence that follows. Kou’s face looks pink. “Uh, Kou?”

“Ah, sorry…” Kou half buries his face into the counter. “I was just...thinking about what that’d be like. His confession. It would be...cute, probably.”

“Please expand your vocabulary, seriously,” Rio says dryly, but Kou doesn’t respond. He just plays around with his empty glass with a distant, self-pitying look on his face. For a while, Rio isn’t sure what to say. Usually  _ he’s _ the calm and collected one when it comes to love and feelings. The most he gets mopey about is his artwork.

“You really want him to confess to you that badly?” she ends up asking. Kou nods forlornly. “And? What are you going to do when he does?”

Kou raises his eyebrows. “Oh. Um…” He knits them together. “‘What am I going to do?’ I haven’t really thought about it…”

Something flares up in Rio at that. Here he is acting like he has never acted before, and he isn’t even  _ thinking _ about it? She slams her hand on the counter, causing Kou to sit in a more upright position. “He’s been stalking you for two weeks and you  _ still  _ haven’t given any thought to it?”

“Well, what am I supposed to say?” Kou asks back, flustered.

“How should I know? They’re  _ your  _ feelings. Has it really been that long since you accepted someone’s confession?”

And now Kou has reached a new level of flustered, the kind where he looks as if someone just took off with all his clothes and left him naked. “A-accepted?! Wh--what makes you think I’ll accept?”

“Are you serious? Anyone would think you’re into him after all of the things you’ve said about him!”

“Eh? Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“But it’s not really like I’m into him! It’s just that he’s always on my mind because he’s always there, and I want to be closer to him somehow, but I-I don’t…” Kou trails off, blushing yet again, hiding half his face with his hand. “I’ve never been...with a guy before, so…”

“So?”

“So I can’t be with him...like that.” He sounds almost disappointed about it.

Rio lets out a long-suffering sigh. “So then tell him what you usually say when you reject him. Seriously, what’s the big deal?” She confiscates his empty glass. “You reject girls every day. Rejecting a guy can’t be much different.”

“But if I reject him, he’s going to stop coming around, and I’ll never learn more about him...”

Rio baps him on the head with his own glass. “If you’re so interested in him, then tell him you want to be friends, dummy. If he really likes you, then he’ll say yes.”

And just like that, Kou re-inflates immediately. “You think so?”

“Uh-huh. Now order some real food, already.”

***

“Hey, Rio, have you ever gotten off thinking about girls?”

Rio almost drops the drink she had been serving on some poor unsuspecting customer, who reels back just in time to avoid the splash zone. She throws them an apologetic smile and sets the drink down before rounding up on Kou. “Don’t ask lewd questions when I’m at work, dumbass. In fact, don’t ask me lewd questions in general!”

Kou flashes a charming apologetic smile that she has learned to see through over the years. “Sorry, my bad. I just want to know if it’s normal or not.”

Rio blinks. “If it’s normal to...what, exactly?”

“To...you know.” And of course  _ now _ Kou has the decency to be a little embarrassed. “To jerk off to someone of the same sex.”

“Wait, what?” Rio leans forward over the counter, causing Kou to jerk back in surprise. She whispers, “Seriously? Were you thinking of Stalker-san?”

Kou’s face does a pretty good impression of a tomato that Rio has never seen before. She kind of wishes she could Snapchat this. “How--how did you know?!”

“Is there any other candidate for this situation?”

“I...guess there isn’t.”

Rio hums and eases back a little, giving him some room. He doesn’t look any less flustered about it, however. “Hmm. So you do like him after all.”

“I, well...I’m...interested in him, yeah.” Kou toys around with his food shyly. “Like I said, I want to know more about him. Even just talking to him would be fine at this point…”

He trails off into more embarrassed silence after that, allowing Rio some time to really take in what it looks like for Yukina Kou to finally like someone. Normally, he only gets this animated about the shoujo manga he adores; prior to this, she had assumed that Kou was more interested in shoujo manga than he would ever be in a real life romance. Granted, he has insisted that he doesn’t read just  _ any _ old shoujo manga; only the ones that seem simple on the surface yet engage him in a way that nothing and no one else could. But nevertheless, most of the romantic emotional turmoil he has felt up until this point has been bound between two pastel-colored covers and riddled with sparkly rose bubble backgrounds. Even when he was dating girls, he seemed as if he only said ‘yes’ because he didn’t care one way or another. And now here he is, agonizing over this boy who looks at but never talks to him.

Rio lets out an absentminded laugh, which earns her a frown. “Sorry. I was just thinking about how weird this situation is. After all, he’s probably thinking the same things about you, too.”

Kou wags a fork at her. “If that’s the case, then why won’t he talk to me?”

“I’m sure someone like you wouldn’t understand, but it takes a lot to put yourself out there, especially when you know you don’t really stand a chance.” She points at his face. “How is a guy like Stalker-san supposed to feel when he’s in love with a beautiful face like that? Surrounded by girls all the time? Having never even breathed a word to him? Of course he’s too scared to talk to you.”

His face crumples yet again. He stares at his food. “Then what am I supposed to do?”

Rio shrugs. “Dunno. Suffer, I guess.”

“You’re the worst.”

“Just for that, you have to pay for your meal this time.”

“Eh?! It was free?!”

***

Yukina Kou should consider himself really fucking fortunate that Rio was already up when he calls her at four in the morning, Rio thinks. In fact, he should praise the ground she walks on for putting up with him all these years.

“I’m sewing,” she grits out over the noise of the sewing machine beating into the fabric beneath her fingers.

“Riiiiioooo,” he moans out in her ear. “Tell me, am I a bad kisser?”

Rio lifts her foot off the pedal. Everything stops. “What kind of questions are you asking me at this hour?” she asks lowly. Quietly, she hopes this isn’t another one of Drunk Kou’s random whims. The last time Drunk Kou felt like going on a kissing spree, he broke the hearts of half the freshman class.

“It’s because Kisa-san didn’t like my kiss!” Kou continues.

“Kisa-san? Who’s that? Oi, Kou, don’t tell me you went on another one of your stupid kissing sprees.”

“What? Of course not!”

“Then explain, already.”

Kou lets out a long sigh. “I met my stalker and he hated me.”

“Met him…? Eh?” Rio pushes her chair out, stunned. “Really?! You met him? What was he like? What happened?” A moment. She lowers her voice. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything in particular…”

“Except kiss him. During your first meeting.”

“No, no! That was during our second meeting! Or, erm. Second and a half!”

Rio groans and leans back in her chair, letting it fall back on its hind legs. “Geez, Kou, what am I going to do with you? Just tell me what happened already. And make sense, please.”

And so he does tell her, in needlessly elaborate detail, using the word ‘cute’ at least eleven times to describe something Kisa-san did or said or looked or  _ felt _ , nevermind the fact that it was impossible for something to ‘feel’ cute...probably. 

By the time Kou is finished with his story, Rio has abandoned the sewing project altogether and is cleaning up. This isn’t the first time she has taken a break from working just to hear Kou rant about his feelings, but it  _ is _ the first time those feelings are about a real person. There’s something both familiar and odd about it, like she has stepped into a dreamworld where everything is made of half-truths. Towards the end of it, she realizes she’s a little out of her depth, here; normally, all she needs to do is debate shipper preferences and plot twists with him until he tires himself out, but that isn’t exactly an option here.

“You know,” she says, deciding to go with the first thing that comes to mind, “this wouldn’t have happened if you acted like a normal person. Then again, that guy isn’t exactly ‘normal,’ either…”

Kou takes on a pouty tone. “Don’t say that. Kisa-san was surprisingly normal for a stalker.”

“Do you listen to yourself talk?” Rio sighs. “Anyway, you can’t just do things like that without warning. Even if you thought he was giving you signals, you could have at least waited until you were alone.”

“So if we’re alone, it’s okay?”

“Why are you asking me what  _ he _ wants?”

“Because I don’t understand!” Kou’s voice doesn’t actually rise that much, but it’s enough to hear the desperate edge to it. The entire room goes still with the silence that follows. His voice is quieter when he finally goes on. “I don’t understand. Everything I thought I knew about him was wrong. I should be disappointed, right? It should be weird. But I’m not. I don’t understand him. I don’t understand my own feelings. What should I do? Rio, what do I do? What if he doesn’t want to see me again?”

It hits her, just now, that this isn’t the Kou she thought she was dealing with. For all the shoujo manga tropes and unlikely run-ins and chances of fate, Kou isn’t taking up the role of the suave, sexy hero the way she thought he would. This isn’t the lover Rio thought Kou would be. Three years ago, when they were together, she thought she knew the potential he had as a boyfriend: calm and thoughtful and perfect--but Kou  _ isn’t _ any of those things, not really. He is reckless and impulsive; he simultaneously acts before he thinks and thinks way too much. He feels things intensely, wholeheartedly, sometimes to the point of obsession. This is the Kou she’s hearing now, tired and confused and desperate. An old, long-forgotten part of her can’t help but be envious, a small part of her feels protective of him, but the larger part of her swells up with pride.

“Listen here, Kou,” she says gently. “You need to give him some space. Just a little. Then, you need to ask him how he feels. There’s no point in guessing on your own. And  _ then  _ you need to be honest in return. Okay? Be upfront.”

It’s strikingly simple--in fact, it’s what Kou has always done, even if he doesn’t realize it--but she can feel him hesitating as he speaks. “That’s asking a lot… How can I be upfront about this?”

Rio considers this. “Er, well. Maybe don’t bring up the stalking right away,” she amends, but even that earns her a displeased noise. She yawns. “I’ve got to go. Take care of yourself.”

“Bye,” replies Kou, distracted, but then-- “Ah, wait, Rio…”

“Mm?”

A pause. “Thank you.”

Rio can’t help but smile. “Take a picture of Boyfriend-san when you can.”

“Kisa-san,” Kou corrects, but doesn’t say no.

*******

“Hey, Rio,” says Kou, bursting into the cafe as loudly and with as little preamble as usual, “you’ve done anal before, right? Ah, I’m asking because--”

Rio spills her long island iced tea all over Kou’s face and doesn’t even feel sorry when she gets fired on the spot.


End file.
